


The boy who lived forever

by hypercharles



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU-After the Battle, Abusive Dursley Family (Harry Potter), Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Canon character deaths, Gen, Harry Cannot Die, Harry is a sad boi, Hurt No Comfort, Immortal Harry, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Sad, The Prophecy - Freeform, implied canon character deaths, the price of immortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:41:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22871923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypercharles/pseuds/hypercharles
Summary: Harry Potter kills Voldemort; everyone knows this.What everyone doesn't know is that by doing so, Harry forfeits his own ability to meet death.He will live forever.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 105
Collections: Read





	The boy who lived forever

**Author's Note:**

> I know everyone probably wanted an update on The Game or even Wise Men Say or even Boy (despite that being teh most recent update), but instead i had a mental breakdown. I misused my medications, had a major panic attack in the shower, and ended up going to the nearest behavioral health center to get an assessment. 
> 
> tldr: am not okay, but wrote this is my breakdown, so hopefully it's not complete shit

Sometimes Harry regrets killing Voldemort.

Not because he thinks Voldemort deserved to live—fuck that. The “man” was pure evil.

And not because he thought there was another way to have won. There wasn’t. Killing Voldemort was the only way.

It’s not even that Harry feels remorse over having murdered someone. It was the only choice possible—no one else could have done it, and it needed to be done.

No, Harry doesn’t regret killing Voldemort, not really.

He regrets the cost.

_either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives_

* * *

The prophecy was right about one thing— either **must** die at the hands of the other. Harry killed Voldemort. He fulfilled that part. And it wasn’t until he truly thought about it that he realized what that meant for him.

Voldemort is dead. Meaning Harry survives. And survives. And survives.

Several rounds of magical testing, palm reading, and careful spellwork confirmed what Harry feared.

He had become more than Death—untouchable by Death. He will never die.

After the results come in, Harry spends the night in a catatonic state. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to outlive everyone. He wants to go when it’s his time. He wants to see his parents again.

He wants to see Sirius and Lupin again.

It isn’t fair. Not really. Harry sacrificed his life to save the magical world—he hates that he has also sacrificed his death.

* * *

He doesn’t tell any of his friends for a long time. Almost a year goes by before he gathers the nerve. It’s a difficult conversation. Hermione just smiled— she had already figured it out. Ginny cried.

Harry thinks about what his future will entail. He’s going to outlive every single person he’s ever loved.

He tries to distance himself from the people around him. He doesn’t want to watch them grow old and die.

But he also doesn’t want to be alone. Every night he spends alone, his thoughts return to his cupboard. How he spent his whole childhood alone and frightened.

He doesn’t want the rest of his life to be the same way.

So he sets himself some rules.

  1. No romance. He doesn’t need eternal heartbreak.
  2. No pets, no companions, no familiars.
  3. No staying in the same town for more than 15 years.



The last rule is a bit preemptive, but Harry refuses to live in non-muggle areas. He needs some sense of normalcy. Unfortunately, you can’t just make up an excuse for why you won’t ever age a day in your life when you are outside the wizarding world. 

* * *

And so he lives like that. He stays with Ginny for a year or so, and then breaks off the relationship, telling her that she needs to find someone she can grow old with.

She tries to fight him. She fights him tooth and nail, but Harry refuses to budge.

Harry watches his friends get older, get married, have kids. Hermione does research in her free time, searching for a way to free Harry from his immortality. It’s been thirty years, Harry hasn’t aged a day past 17, and Hermione hasn’t found a thing. He won’t ever say this, just like she will never admit it, but he knows she’s given up hope. This is the one mystery that Hermione Granger will never solve.

So he just nods his head and reads the books she suggests, goes to the experts she recommends, and tries not to hate her with every failure.

The first child his friends have sends him into his worse depression yet. He wanted kids so badly, especially after meeting the Weasleys.

He didn’t want biological children; he wanted to adopt. He wanted to save children from having a childhood like his. No child should ever have to live their lives in fear. He wanted to make a difference, and now it will never happen.

How can you be a parent when your child will soon be older than you? How do you watch your own child die of old age without ever aging a day yourself?

He hates himself for it, but he can hardly stand to be around his friends’ kids. They are a reminder of everything he will never have.

He thought it couldn’t get worse than that. And then it does.

He screams into the night sky when Ron dies. His first-ever friend is gone. Ron was the first person to ever care about Harry: the first, other than teachers, to call him by his name. He wasn’t ‘boy’ or ‘that Potter brat’ or ‘freak’ or anything else.

Ron was the first to show Harry what a family really was. Not a perfect house filled with pain and hunger, but a mess of love and laughter. Ron was the first to show Harry that he was worth something, worth anything.

Ron was the first reason Harry had to live. Ron was why Harry no longer wished for death when Vernon unbuckled his belt; instead, he wished for freedom.

Freedom that Ron had given him.

And now Ron is gone.

After that, Harry tries to go numb. He debates disappearing until the rest are gone, but he can’t stomach leaving his dying friends to wonder about where he’s gone.

He wants to be there for them.

* * *

It doesn’t get easier.

* * *

His heart shatters each day. George dies a few years after Ron, and Neville soon after that. Hermione and Ginny die within weeks of each other. Luna lives the longest, and she stays by Harry’s side until the very end. She shows him nothing but pure compassion and love. But all good things must come to an end, and Luna passes in her sleep, with Harry in the next room over. It takes him weeks to stop crying.

90 years have passed since Harry killed Voldemort, and Harry hasn’t gotten a single wrinkle, a single grey hair.

He’s still the same boy, but now he’s all alone. 

* * *

Harry soon retreats into the muggle world.

As much as he loves magic, as much as he owes magic for saving his life (in a multitude of ways), he resents it.

He hates it.

Magic has taken everything.

Even in the worst days of his childhood, the days where he was so hungry he thought he wouldn’t see another day, there was always one small mercy.

He always knew that if he died, the pain would be over.

His stomach could tear itself apart, Vernon could beat him until he went numb, but he always knew that death would be a mercy.

It would be the end of his pain.

There is no chance for mercy now. His pain will never end.

He tries. Merlin knows he tries. He’s not proud of it, but he tries.

Nothing works.

He simply cannot die.

* * *

Centuries pass. The wizarding world forgets about Harry Potter.

The muggle world never knew about him in the first place, so he’s safe as long as he keeps moving.

So that’s what he does.

He travels all across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. He meets wonderful people and finds incredible places.

But he never stays.

* * *

He can’t.

* * *

He won’t ever let himself.

* * *

And so the boy who lived exists in a void. He touches no lives and lets no life touch him.

* * *


End file.
